Go For It!

I know you've dreamed of a life like mine. You'd like to travel the world, ride other people's motorcycles, hang out with your heroes and tell hotties in cafes you're a writer. I do it. You can do it. It's easy.

Yes. You too can find joy and make big money writing for motorcycling web sites and magazines -- your dreams come true.

About those writing dreams: Do not talk about them. Your listeners have their own shining dreams; They cherish the time they spend polishing them. Instead, write something. Then try to sell what you wrote.

Thousands of motorcyclists yearn to write. Hundreds would love to write about the riding or the life. Seventeen will actually sit down and write. They're (duh) the ones who'll get published. You can be one of them.

As someone said, Aristotle or Sting, I get 'em confused: Go for it.

To prepare, I suggest journalism classes and a trust fund. The classes will provide you with writing tools. The trust fund income will sustain you as you climb the long ladder to motojournalist success and riches.

Your journalism instructor will tell you to write short sentences and short paragraphs. You can, at your option, ignore that wisdom and write long, elegant sentences and dense 500-word paragraphs.

Editors will ignore your work. Your dreams will crumble to dust. You'll forget your bike. Frustrated, embittered, you'll drink cheap beer and smoke generic cigarettes. Your teeth will turn brown, your fingernails yellow. You'll develop a taste for accordion music. Your dog will leave you.

Better to write short sentences.

What to write about? Write about something you feel strongly about. Say what you think. Try to put your fear aside.

Use the positive voice. Be sure the reader can tell to whom each pronoun refers. Read Elements of Style and follow its charming dictates. Learn the difference between "its" and "it's."

Use your thesaurus to find simpler words, not words that drive readers to their dictionaries. Avoid Latin phrases. Know what the words you use mean: Don't say "infamous" when you mean "famous."

Before you submit your piece, read it aloud to yourself or someone who'll sit still long enough to listen. If you stumble as you read, rewrite that phrase or sentence until you can read it smoothly.

Then ask someone to sit at your computer and read your piece to you. If that person becomes confused or stumbles as she reads, rewrite that part. Root out rough places.

If you confuse your reader, or make your reader backtrack to reread some section of your piece, you will lose that reader. You have to lead the reader through your ideas step-by-step or risk losing him.

Unless you're Stephen King, you have to use email. If you type pieces and fax or mail them in, overworked editors know that someone will have to retype those stories to publish them. My guess is: No one will bother to read them.

If you hate technology, if you think email is the devil's inkwell, write for some anti-technology 'zine. Don't be surprised when they ask you to email them your articles.

I've found that attaching pieces to email notes is nearly as bad as faxing them. No one wants to open attachments in this super-virus age. Put your piece in the body of your email.

Write short. Editors seldom say: Make this longer. I recall submitting a 1250-word column and being told I had to make it fit an 850-word space. How can I?, I cried. I'll rip the guts right out of my piece!

But I did it, and the story lost almost nothing. I was amazed but I'd learned a powerful lesson. Writing long is lazy. It's for the writer, not the reader. Resist going longer than 1,000 words, and 850 is probably better.

You have a sliver of your reader's time and focus. Going long means you feel you can hold his attention as you leisurely develop your ideas. Movie-makers spend $100 million to hold our attention for 90 minutes.

If, despite my warnings, you do go long, your editor will shorten your piece. Takes an experienced editor about 40 seconds. Often they simply lop off what won't fit in the space. If you want your piece to end where you wrote END, play it safe: Write short.

Where to send your work? Do you belong to a motorcycle club? Start with your club newsletter. The editor will almost surely run your stuff. You'll be thrilled and encouraged to take the next step, to no-cost regional publications like San Francisco's CityBike. They too will be excited to read your pieces and perhaps publish them.

National magazines have complimentary subscriptions to those regional ones. Classy national-level editors read the regionals or scan them at least. You could catch an editor's eye.

Continue writing for your club paper and regional magazine. One month you'll come up with something you feel might be perfect for Motorcyclist or Cycle World or one of the other monthlies. Email it to the editor. Remember to breathe.

Do not expect a prompt reply. Those editors are sorely overworked, one and all, simply too busy to attend to inessentials like returning phone calls or email queries and dealing with persistent, irritating writers.

If since you submitted the piece, your son or daughter has gone off to college and medical school, finished a residency, set up a successful practice and invested in a professional sports franchise, and you have still not heard from that editor, send another email.

These things take time.

If you hear from the editor that your piece has been accepted, you are on your way. Months later, when that first national magazine check arrives, take your long-suffering loved ones for a celebration dinner.

Do it right. Don't look at the prices. Hell, Supersize if you want.
END